At the end of each season we look back on the previous competitive year and the players who influenced our scene by creating a Top 50 Players list. Season 7 brought an exciting shake up with the inclusion of community events and a partnership with start.gg that provided $20,000 in additional prizes as part of their rebranding celebration. After 8 months of fierce competition and community efforts, we racked up an astonishing 374 events around the world with 7,455 entrants earning points for three unique leagues with cash rewards and flight vouchers to our finals at Genesis 9.
The season featured brand new event tiers with the inclusion of community events: RCS Bronze, RCS Silver, RCS Gold, and RCS Premier. Premier events were developer-ran and consisted of our biggest events of the season, while the remaining classifications denoted community events – RCS Community being the smallest, and RCS Gold being the largest – the breakdown can be found here. Premier events featured each of our LANs from RCS Season 6, some of our favorite majors from before the COVID-19 pandemic, and even added some entirely new tournaments to our circuit.
RCS Season 7 was a testament to our wonderful community. The growth, and support shown across all levels of competition was staggering, and the ripple effects of the movement can be found with the revival of Grassroots League and the charge they’re leading to support local Rivals communities.
View more articles in the Season Seven NA Rankings Series:
As usual, events must meet a certain threshold of competition, attendance, and diversity to count towards Top 50. In RCS Season 7 we ran nine separate Premier events that were guaranteed to count for rankings, while the greater community put together eight of their own. Local community events that counted towards rankings required a minimum of 32 attendees with five or more previous Top 50 players in attendance, while online community events required a minimum of 100 attendees. All events were evaluated and determinations were made based on a number of factors including disqualifications and actual attendance.
Player Qualifications
Our goal for Season 7 was to increase the number of required events to match the uptick in community events that would count for the rankings this year. It was decided that four events would be required to qualify with at least two of them being RCS Premier tier. While these guidelines were more strict than previous years, the community rose to the task as we had hoped, providing six additional LAN and 2 additional online events to our Top 50 standards.
Methodology
This year we brought back the well established panel system from Seasons 3 – 6. Players were ranked based on each of their eligible events, including consideration for their wins and losses to land them at their results. Disqualifications from the losers bracket were considered as losses for the player that DQd, while not giving their opponent an artificial bump beyond their better placement.
Events carried the same weight potential between online and offline except for the RCS Finals, which was weighted heavier due to the high stakes and the fact that it was our grand finale. While the overall weight of the premier events majors had the potential to be the same, it was clear that some events were strictly more competitively stacked than others. In addition, the community events landed in tiers of their own. The weight of events in order are as follows: Genesis 9, Riptide 2022, Heat Wave 5, The Big House 10, Super Smash Con 10, GoTE 4TheKids 7, Double Down, RCS June, RCS December, Get On My Level 2022, COST 2022, One Day War, TAPS 5, Sunnyshore, Back In Blood 5, PPS, The Kingpin 10. While events are considered in different weights, this was only a partial deciding factor. In general, the council favored consistency among events above individual peaks.
Once this ranking system was completed, the panel made additional adjustments to the order based on head-to-head results and other data. This group consisted of players and tournament organizers from across the country in order to accurately represent the various regions of North America: CyberHex, Jack Ryan, MSB, Nbad, Protagify, SBS, and Sparx21. Additional data was provided by Menace13, who had no input regarding final placements of the Top 50.
We’d like to thank all of our panelists for dedicating their time to putting this together for the community, as well as Tax1k for our beautiful Season 7 player cards.
Hidden Bosses
Players given the title of Hidden Boss were recognized by the panel as major threats to tournaments this season that just didn’t quite meet the requirements to be ranked. Each player listed placed Top 8 at a RCS Premier event.
Backpack, BioBirb, Bullets, Guard, Kodako (now Vulnita), Lattim, Protagify
